Film Text Analysis: New Perspectives on the Analysis of Filmic Meaning

221 Pages·2017·2.678 MB·English

by  Wildfeuer, Janina & John Bateman

Film Text Analysis
“The first collection to give an overview of the field of film text anal-
ysis including a wide variety of approaches, methodological advances
and in-depth analyses hinting at the possibilities of multimodality
studies for film.”
—Florian Mundhenke, University of Leipzig, Germany
This book examines film as a multimodal text and an audiovisual synthesis,
bringing together current work within the fields of narratology, philoso-
phy, multimodal analysis, sound as well as cultural studies in order to cover
a wide range of international academic interest. The book provides new
insights into current work and turns the discussion towards recent research
questions and analyses, representing and constituting in each contribution
new work in the discipline of film text analysis. With the help of various
example analyses, all showing the methodological applicability of the dis-
cussed issues, the collection provides novel ways of considering film as one
of the most complex and at the same time broadly comprehensible texts.
Janina Wildfeuer is a Researcher in Multimodal Linguistics in the Linguistics
Department of the University of Bremen, Germany, specializing in multi-
modal linguistics and media studies. Her recent publications include a
monograph on Film Discourse Interpretation from 2014 as well as an edited
collection of papers building bridges for multimodal research (2015).
John A. Bateman is a Full Professor of Applied Linguistics in the English and
Linguistics Departments of the University of Bremen, Germany, specializing
in functional, computational and multimodal linguistics. His recent publi-
cations include monographs on Multimodal Film Analysis (2012) as well as
on the Text and Image divide (2014).
Routledge Advances in Film Studies
For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com.
41 The Western in the Global South
Edited by MaryEllen Higgins, Rita Keresztesi, and Dayna Oscherwitz
42 Spaces of the Cinematic Home
Behind the Screen Door
Edited by Eleanor Andrews, Stella Hockenhull, and Fran
Pheasant-Kelly
43 Spectacle in “Classical” Cinemas
Musicality and Historicity in the 1930s
Tom Brown
44 Rashomon Effects
Kurosawa, Rashomon, and Their Legacies
Edited by Blair Davis, Robert Anderson and Jan Walls
45 Mobility and Migration in Film and Moving Image Art
Cinema Beyond Europe
Nilgün Bayraktar
46 The Other in Contemporary Migrant Cinema
Imagining a New Europe?
Guido Rings
47 Horror Film and Affect
Towards a Corporeal Model of Viewership
Xavier Aldana Reyes
48 India’s New Independent Cinema
Rise of the Hybrid
Ashvin Immanuel Devasundaram
49 Early Race Filmmaking in America
Edited by Barbara Tepa Lupack
50 Film Text Analysis
New Perspectives on the Analysis of Filmic Meaning
Edited by Janina Wildfeuer and John A. Bateman
Film Text Analysis
New Perspectives on the Analysis
of Filmic Meaning
Edited by Janina Wildfeuer
and John A. Bateman
First published 2017
by Routledge
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without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Wildfeuer, Janina, 1984– editor. | Bateman, John A., editor.
Title: Film text analysis: new perspectives on the analysis of filmic meaning /
edited by Janina Wildfeuer and John A. Bateman.
Description: New York: Routledge, [2016] | Series: Routledge advances in
film studies | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016022280
Subjects: LCSH: Motion pictures—Philosophy. | Motion pictures—Semiotics.
Classification: LCC PN1995 .F4666 2016 | DDC 791.4301—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016022280
ISBN: 978-1-138-91138-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-69274-6 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by codeMantra
Contents
List of Table and Figures vii
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
1 Introduction: Bringing Together New Perspectives
of Film Text Analysis 1
JOHN A. BATEMAN & JANINA WILDFEUER
2 Towards a Semiotics of Film Lighting 24
THEO VAN LEEUWEN & MORTEN BOERIIS
3 Editing Space as an Audio-Visual Composition 46
MARTINE HUVENNE
4 Movie Physics or Dynamic Patterns as the Skeleton of Movies 66
WOLFGANG WILDGEN
5 From Visual Narrative Grammar to Filmic Narrative
Grammar: The Narrative Structure of Static
and Moving Images 94
NEIL COHN
6 From Text to Recipient: Pragmatic Insights for Filmic
Meaning Construction 118
JANINA WILDFEUER
7 Intermediality in Film: A Blending-Based Perspective 141
JOHN A. BATEMAN
8 Eat, Pray, LovE: Expanding Adaptations and Global Tourism 169
JOYCE GOGGIN
vi Contents
9 Conclusion: Film Text Analysis – A New Beginning? 187
JANINA WILDFEUER & JOHN A. BATEMAN
List of Contributors 199
Film Index 203
Name Index 205
Subject Index 207
List of Table and Figures
Table
5.1 Gross differences in dimensions between prototypical cases
of drawn and filmed narratives 112
Figures
1.1 A graphical rendition of the ‘crisis’ of textuality
and its disciplinary repercussions. 7
2.1 Emil Jannings in The Last Laugh (Murnau 1924). 26
2.2 Still from Suspicion (Hitchcock 1941). 28
2.3 Three-point lighting set up (Young/Petzold 1972: 107). 29
2.4 (a) Still from CSI Miami (left) and (b) screen grab from
CSI computer game (right). 30
2.5 (a) Still from Persona (Bergman 1966) and (b) Still from
Kiss me Deadly (Aldrich 1955). 37
2.6 The textual meaning potential of lighting. 38
2.7 The interpersonal meaning potential of lighting. 41
2.8 (a) Still from The Seventh Seal (Bergman 1957) and
(b) Still from The Magician (Bergman 1958). 42
2.9 The ideational meaning potential of lighting. 43
3.1 Graphical illustration of the ‘kinesphere of Ryan’. 58
3.2 Graphical illustration of the two universes combined in the
scene from Gravity. 61
4.1 Pendulums in a series of coupled pendulums and the light
trace of a double pendulum. 69
4.2 (a) Screenshot from Vertigo (Hitchcock 1958) and
(b) Screenshot from North by Northwest (Hitchcock 1959);
look into the abyss. 72
4.3 (a) Screenshot from Dogville and (b) Screenshot from
The Truman Show. 73
4.4 (a) Quasi-still in the final scene of Queen Christina with
Greta Garbo and (b) pendulum with rest position. 77
4.5 Screenshots from the final scene in Bonnie and Clyde
(Penn 1967), after many episodes of crime. 78
viii List of Table and Figures
4.6 (a) Belmondo in Breathless (1960) and Dustin Hoffman in
The Marathon Man (1976). The camera moves in front
of the actors in the street. 79
4.7 (a) Screenshots from Quantum of Solace: place of chase
are a road tunnel at Lake Garda and the marble quarries
of Carrara; (b) a schematic description of the chase and
the archetype of capture below (cf. Wildgen 1982). 84
4.8 Coupled pendulums (the two ropes) and double pendulums
(the arm on which the rope hangs also moves). 84
4.9 Screenshots from Quantum of Solace. First row: Fight in
the theater foyer (exchange of gunfire in the movie); fight
on stage in Bregenz (in the opera Tosca). Tosca stabs Scrapia,
the blackmailer. Second row: Parallel fighting in the exploding
hotel: Camille against the general – Bond against Greene. 86
5.1 A narrative sequence with two narrative constituents and one
subordinate modifying constituent with a Refiner. 98
5.2 Different types of narrative conjunction using the repetition
of a single narrative category (Initials) to show various
semantic information (actions, characters in a scene, parts of
an individual, or semantically associated elements),
which could also be framed by a single image. 99
5.3 Narrative grammar applied to a sequence from Star Wars
(12:00–12:27). 102
5.4 Paraphrase of the narrative grammar for the Star Wars
sequence (1977, 12:00–12:27) in Figure 5.3. 103
5.5 Polymorphic divisional panel of a bee flying. 110
6.1 The levels of filmic text and discourse (following a more
general description of text and discourse in Wildfeuer
forthcoming). 126
6.2 Inserts, title sequence, and cut to long shot in Gravity.
The inserts in the first shot read “At 600km above the planet
Earth the temperature fluctuates between +258 and –148
degrees Fahrenheit. There is nothing to carry sound.
No air pressure. No oxygen. Life in space is impossible.” 128
6.3 Two frames from the very long shot at the beginning of
Gravity, showing a white object becoming visible. 132
7.1 The classic blending example: the respective semantics of the
words ‘boathouse’ (left) and ‘houseboat’ (right) generated
by two contrasting blending diagrams operating over
the same ‘input spaces’. 146
7.2 Intermedial citation of Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’
(shown right) in Robert Altman’s Mash (1970, shown left)
together with correspondence ‘mappings’ with the original. 147
List of Table and Figures ix
7.3 Running the blend to derive further interpretations of details
from the input spaces, such as a ‘lamp ~ halo’ association and
blended transfer of spiritual attributes. 149
7.4 A frame sequence from the ‘Robin Hood’ scene from
Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson’s Shrek (2001,
at approximately 0:50:00). 151
7.5 Representative frames from the opening sequence of Paul
Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers (1997). 154
7.6 Frames from the congressional hearing scene from
Jon Fravreau’s Iron Man 2 (2010). 156
7.7 Representative frames from the opening sequence of Doug
Liman’s Edge Of Tomorrow (2014). 157
7.8 Representative frames from the production company logo
sequence at the beginning of Liman’s Edge Of
Tomorrow (2014). 158
7.9 Suggestive blend diagram involving the mediated
communicative situations of film and live broadcast news. 159
7.10 Opening sequence from Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon (2008). 161
8.1 Julia Roberts emotes in front of cardboard cut-out locals
in Eat, Pray, Love. 180
8.2 Julia Roberts with one of her squantos in Eat, Pray, Love. 181